


Dissonance

by bironic



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Related, Character Study, Classical Music, Divorce, Episode Related, Friendship, Gen, Infidelity, Piano
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-19
Updated: 2006-04-19
Packaged: 2017-10-03 12:32:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bironic/pseuds/bironic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In her head she has already begun numbering herself among his ex-wives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dissonance

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through 2.17, "Sex Kills."
> 
> Written as part of the House Het Ficathon for stormmedicine, who requested Wilson/Julie, a Steinway concert piano, T. S. Eliot and two bagels. All poetry excerpts are from Eliot's "Burnt Norton" (Four Quartets) except the last, which is from "The Waste Land." I tried to make the medical discussion accurate but had to work within the hole-riddled framework set up in "Skin Deep" (see http://politedissent.com/archives/1124).
> 
> Thank you to synn, catilinarian and musicisbelievng for their invaluable input on the disjointed first drafts.
> 
> Remixed by zulu: <http://archiveofourown.org/works/992>

                 _Words, after speech, reach_  
_Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,_  
_Can words or music reach_  
_The stillness..._

 

 

It's the silence that gets them in the end.

The griping was awful, but this almost makes him yearn for it again. Now they speak to each other in terse notes slapped on the fridge--"Pick up dry cleaning," "Home late tonight"--and know each other by small disruptions around the house, objects shifted in daily life: the keys tossed in a different position in the bowl by the door, the mail left open on the table, the toothpaste rolled a little further.

On the days when their schedules coincide, they have breakfast together. She in her nightgown makes the coffee and watches him (suited, as though he is only pausing here in their home in the regrettable moments between sleep and work) prepare the bagels--two bagels, one for each, for he has never stopped being kind, only stopped seeing her there in front of him--toasting, slicing, smoothing on the cream cheese, laying out the lox, just so; she knows his movements from years of observance, following them at first with love, now with the hatred of familiarity without affection.

He puts the plates in front of them and she sips her coffee and he reads the _Times_, each painfully conscious of the other and pretending preoccupation. If she speaks, she knows, she will not be able to keep the venom from her voice, and he will take it without a word, and for the rest of the week he will have breakfast at work and come home after she has gone to bed; so she says nothing. When they have eaten and put the dishes in the sink, he leaves for the hospital to care for people who are not his wife, and she drives into town to sleep with the man who is not her husband.

 

 

Home seems like a bad dream and work the reality. Each morning the suffocating stillness of their apartment, the palpable tensions of his wife's resentment and his own guilt, gives way to the organized chaos of the hospital, where he welcomes with relief the hurried stream of physicians and patients in the hallways and private rooms and in his office, settles into the rhythm of evaluation and diagnosis and treatment-planning, the occasional surgery, clinic hours, the department and Board meetings, even the interminable stacks of paperwork. His patients and administrative duties demand his full attention for most of the day, and when there is a lull in the action he wanders over to House or the nurses' station or the cafeteria or anywhere, really, to keep occupied. For hours at a time he forgets about his other home entirely. It's only as evening approaches that the dread clutches at him again.

 

 

At her lover's apartment they laugh and wrestle and kiss and sprawl in the sunlight that hits the bedspread mid-morning. She admires his pianist's hands and he strokes her face and hair and calls her beautiful.

After they make love and press their foreheads together and talk about nothing, he pulls his jeans on and walks barefoot on the hardwood into the other room, where the piano is. He has a Steinway living room grand, black and beautiful and surrounded by scattered papers, and though he complains each time he sits on the bench that he wishes he had the space for a proper concert grand, it's clear that he loves it. She remembers when James treated her with the same reverent delicacy, not so long ago though it seems like another marriage entirely, and lets herself indulge in a moment of self-pity before she wraps herself in the blanket, walks over to the couch and stretches out, watching him play.

She doesn't know much about classical music and rarely recognizes the pieces he shares with her, but she doesn't mind. When he is not playing he speaks to her of tempo and theory, composers and composition, and unlike in the early days when James tried to tell her about his work and filled her head with sickness and sterile Latin, she is beginning to sense the passion in this instrument and likes the feel of the Italian words in her mouth: _capriccio, sostenuto, gioioso, vivace._

In her head she has already begun numbering herself among James' ex-wives.

 

 

He has always gotten along well with women. They find him easy to talk to, which they tell him is attractive in a man; they like that he keeps himself neat and can dress well; and his good looks and prestigious position at the hospital don't hurt either. He offers them a sympathetic ear and keen advice, talents that have been invaluable in his line of work and which he cannot seem to switch off. (How ironic now that he needs to talk and there is no one he feels comfortable confiding in who is also willing to listen. He is not desperate enough yet to go to House for commiseration, and Stacy is back home enmeshed in her own marital frustrations.) He enjoys connecting with people, and although on occasion he finds himself cornered and praying for rescue as Jennifer sobs over her love life or Ann-Marie gushes about her son, for the most part it is harmless, playful chatter that on very good days reminds him he can be desirable.

Admittedly, once in a while he gets a little too close. Caring about others can be a fault as well as a strength, and even after ten years and two divorces, he cannot bring himself to say no.

Some days he hates himself for indulging in these flirtations. It is old, this self-disgust, too old to influence his behavior. He knows it's wrong, knows if he were to channel this energy into his own failing relationship there might be hope for its recovery, but he can't help it. There is comfort in knowing women still like him even if his wife doesn't.

 

 

She hates herself around him now, hates her short temper, the bitterness in her voice. Hates how she is angry all the time. It is like a learned response, the fury tightening in her chest when she comes home even if she knows he is not there. She remembers James telling her that some chemo patients throw up when they see a hospital, thinking of their treatment.

She hates James, too, his increasingly transparent lies, the days when he doesn't bother with excuses at all, his predictability (she can tell the time by his morning and bedtime routines, knows the day by his wardrobe and meals), his impossible sensitivity, and that wounded look he wears constantly now, irritating the hell out of her yet leaving her reluctant to lash out. Once upon a time, she thought that if she yelled, he would yell back and they would work through it. She can count on one hand the number of times that tactic has been successful. Still, the rancor in itself has become perversely satisfying.

She thought at first that he was having an affair, with Stacy maybe, whom he has known since before his last marriage, whom he used to leap to see whenever she was in town. That was back before Julie comprehended the extent of the time he spends with his friend--the one she had felt sorry for, before she knew better, the one who knows things about her she never intended James to share--and learned about her husband's infuriating inability to refuse him. In her more cynical musings she wonders whether that same weakness made him agree to marry her in the first place.

 

 

_Or say that the end precedes the beginning,_  
_And the end and the beginning were always there_  
_Before the beginning and after the end._  
_And all is always now._

 

 

Looking back, he can't identify the turning point of this marriage. All he sees is the insidious perfusion of disillusionment since shortly after their honeymoon.

She started to take it personally that he worked long hours, preferred things tidier than the "comfortable mess" she was accustomed to, liked to cook when he was home for it, spent time with House. She stopped calling him Jim. He didn't want to wear a wedding band. She didn't want kids. He drifted. They found it harder to be silly together. After a grace period she started needling him about never being home anymore, complaining that he never looked at her when he was there, that he paid more attention to his medical journals and the television and his friend and his mother and even the maid he'd hired than to her. Now she is the very embodiment of accusation, and, unable to confess to what he has not yet done, he has instead resigned himself to her simmering hostility, the slow-progressing malignancy that has metastasized throughout their relationship. They haven't slept together since--hell, they haven't slept in the same _bed_ for weeks now.

He supposes the signs were there before he proposed. She was always outgoing, strong-willed, a free spirit, vibrant with joy at the best of times but prone to sulking when she didn't get her way. She grew anxious when she felt ignored. He had known going in that he would not be able to provide the kind of sustained attention she needed from him.

Yes. In the beginning was the end.

 

 

Julie knows exactly when it started.

Nearly two years ago, back when James was starting to get tired of coming with her to social events, she got two tickets to one of the faculty recitals at the university. She thought he liked piano music, knew that his best friend was a fairly talented amateur pianist himself, and assumed he would appreciate some time away from the stress of his job.

They were supposed to meet on campus in front of Richmond Auditorium. She waited until the concert was about to start, then went in alone and sat there with the chair beside her embarrassingly empty. It was during the intermission as she gathered her things to go home that she met Matthew, and ended up staying. She didn't sleep with him then, though she accepted his number, didn't consider it until after James abandoned her at Christmas.

The next evening when she told James over dinner that she'd gone alone, he apologized and said he'd had to stay late at work to help House (House again) with a difficult case. It was a common enough occurrence that the selfish bastard kept her husband at the hospital into the night to consult on cases that weren't even related to his specialty. But she knew James too well not to identify the moment of panic in his eyes when she mentioned the concert, the way he averted his gaze and rubbed the back of his neck as he fumbled through his excuse.

Yes. That was the beginning of the end.

 

 

She calls him at the office to debate who will be home Thursday to let in the repairman. He has patients to see. She needs to show some houses. Soon enough he remembers why he was grateful in the early days of Spousal Silence.

He is trying to civilly interrupt her when someone opens the door without knocking. He doesn't need to look up to know it's House, but he does anyway and makes a series of vague, helpless half-gestures indicating the phone and the door. House all but rolls his eyes at him and raps the now wide-open door with his knuckles as he limps in.

"Can it wait?" Wilson asks him, knowing it is futile.

"_Excuse me?_" his wife asks.

"Sorry, can you hold on for one second, please?" He covers the mouthpiece and braces himself. "House--"

"You break the news to terminal cases over the phone now?" House asks, lowering himself into the chair with a grimace. "That's almost as bad as getting dumped on Instant Messenger."

"It's my wife."

"Your wife has cancer? How ironic."

"She doesn't have cancer. Nobody has cancer."

"Supermodel's got cancer. You should be more sensitive about these wild generalizations."

"_Is that House?_" Julie demands, sounding disgusted.

He adjusts his hand to cover the phone better. "She does?"

"Yup. Just need you to find it."

"Wait--so you think she has cancer, but you haven't seen it."

"She's responding to IVIG. It's paraneoplastic syndrome."

"Okay, that's…a leap of logic.…"

"The cancer's there. Requisition the ultrasound, take X-rays, schedule a CT scan, whatever you people use."

"And I assume you need everything done ten minutes ago, other patients who actually have appointments be damned."

"I'm sure you'll manage. Use your wily charms on Rochelle over in Radiology."

"Rhonda."

House gives him a pointed look.

Wilson becomes aware that something is…off. He squints, then pinpoints it: there's a dial tone humming in his ear.

"Great," he says, and puts the receiver down. "She hung up on me."

"Leaving you conveniently free to play a few rounds of Find the Tumor." House levers himself up with another wince.

Wilson looks at the phone. "I should call her back."

"I should wear my lab coat. Come on. Your marriage is beyond help. Cancer Girl can still be saved."

 

 

Matthew invites her to one of his students' recitals and murmurs commentary for her throughout the performance. It is an all-Rachmaninoff program, and his student, who is visibly sweating now, seems to her quite talented. She likes Rachmaninoff's intensity even if his music is often very dark. She closes her eyes and revels in Matthew's voice soft in her ear, the chords resonating in the hall.

At the end of the Prelude in G Minor, she makes up her mind.

When it is over and he has seen the young man off, he walks her to her car. The nights are growing warmer, the air refreshing without bite; she wears her coat without gloves, and Matthew looks comfortable in his white shirt and open leather jacket. After they emerge from campus onto Nassau Street and step around the first knot of students laughing and arguing on the sidewalk, he gives her a stack of CDs to try and describes his favorite parts of each recording.

When they reach her car, she tells him she is going to leave James.

 

 

                          _Words strain,_  
_Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,_  
_Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,_  
_Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,_  
_Will not stay still._

 

 

They are approaching the crisis point. He doesn't know how he knows this after months of frigidity, but this silence cannot continue for much longer. He does know that the chocolates were too little, too late; when he left for the office this morning he saw them untouched on the kitchen table. He knows he needs to spend more time at home, yet that is the last thing he wants to do. Between that, Stacy's departure and House's worsening leg pain, he is getting dangerously distracted at work--screwed up a diagnosis he shouldn't have, missed two entire testes in that kid, the cancerous one of which would have killed her if House and his coterie hadn't found it themselves. Something has got to give.

He brings roses home that evening. Standing on the front stoop fishing for his keys, he catches noise from inside as if the television or stereo is on full volume. Nonplussed, he unlocks the door and opens it to a symphony so loud it seems a physical presence in the house. He steps inside and hardly hears the latch click behind him.

No lights are on beyond the foyer, so when he has put down his bag and hung up his jacket he follows the sound of the furious piano and swelling orchestra up the half-flight of stairs into the living room, where Julie is sitting on the couch in the dark with her legs tucked under her. She is lit in green and orange from the CD player and the street lamps. He wonders when she started listening to classical music, then wonders whether she always has and he has somehow never noticed.

"Beethoven?" he finds himself asking.

She looks up, startled, and--for the first time he can recall in months, if not years--blushes, deep enough that he can see it darken her cheeks even in this strange light. He feels a sudden rush of affection for her.

"Saint-Saëns," she replies in perfect French. He blinks. She cuts the music off mid-crescendo with the remote beside her.

The music echoing in his head, he watches her as she stands and brushes past him into the kitchen, flipping on the light on her way. She sits at the table in front of a mostly-empty wine glass.

"These are for you," he says, remembering the flowers, and puts them beside the unopened chocolates.

She reaches out, fingers a blossom, pulls her hand back and turns her glass by the stem. "James," she says. "We need to talk."

He sighs and sits down. So the moment has come. What to say? 'Sorry, honey, I've been thinking about cheating on you for more than a year now'?

"Look," he begins.

He is not surprised when she interrupts him. He is surprised, however, by what she says.

 

 

_The poor bastard,_ she thinks when she sees the look on his face. _It didn't occur to him that I might do it. _

"You--what?" he says, finally.

"I've been having an affair," she repeats, already out of patience, wanting this to be over. "I've been sleeping with another man."

"Who?" Immediately, he holds up his hand. "No, I don't want to know." He rubs his forehead.

"He makes me laugh," she says, as though that explains everything. In a way, she supposes, it does. Then she keeps going, because she doesn't know what else to do: "He has time for me. He makes me feel wanted."

"I really don't want to hear it." That waver in his voice again. She almost feels sorry for him. She looks at him looking at the wall until he goes on: "So that's it, then."

She shrugs. "I don't think we're fixable. I don't even want to fix us anymore."

She waits. He doesn't argue with her. Big surprise.

"For God's sake, James," she tries. "I thought it would be different with us."

He just looks at her.

She sighs noisily and pushes her chair back. "I've got some things packed. I can be out tonight."

He stands up as well. "No, I'll go. I can stay with--" He stops.

"Right," she says, and is glad she no longer has to bother masking the spite that tightens her jaw whenever that man is mentioned.

He breaks the stalemate by nodding and leaving the room. She sits back down and sips the rest of her wine as she listens to him take a suitcase out of the closet, gather his things from the spare room, open and shut drawers in their room--she still thinks of it as their room--and finally rustle around in the bathroom.

He reappears in the doorway, hair ruffled, carrying the small suitcase he uses for conference weekends. She rises and walks with him down the stairs to the front door. She watches him put on his jacket. He ducks down and hefts his work bag onto his shoulder. Half-turned, his hand on the doorknob, he pauses and asks, "Will you stay with him?"

She starts to answer, then gives a short, humorless laugh. "What do you care? You haven't been interested in my life for a long time." She should regret saying that, but it's true, and it feels good to hurt him a little.

"Touché," he murmurs, then opens the door and walks out.

 

 

"This is the way a marriage ends," he sighs when House returns with a sandwich and two beers and _oof_s onto the couch beside him. "Not with a bang but a whimper."

"You've never had any trouble getting your bangs from the nurses. I'm sure they'll help you recover." House offers him half the sandwich and a napkin.

Wilson takes them and glares at him, or tries to; it is rare that he can pull one off with House. "Thanks," he says, sounding not at all sincere, puts the sandwich and napkin on the coffee table and cracks open his beer.

House reaches forward to grab the remote. "Who'd she do it with?" he asks as he turns on the TV and scrolls through the listings.

"I didn't ask."

"Wuss."

He sees House look at him out of the corner of his eye as though to gauge his reaction to the jibe. He quirks a small, tired smile.

There are any number of things House could say next--"Karma's a bitch," for instance, or "So how come _you're_ the one who moved out?"--and while he knows he deserves all of this and more, he is too weary to handle any more humiliation tonight. But House only puts on Monster Trucks and limits his remarks to the show. Wilson relaxes into the couch on which he will soon be sleeping, and eats his sandwich.

 

 

_She turns and looks a moment in the glass,_  
_Hardly aware of her departed lover;_  
_Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:_  
_'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.' _

 

 

When her soon-to-be-ex-husband has gone, Julie holds her own gaze in the mirror in the foyer. Then she walks upstairs into the kitchen again, where she pours more wine and drinks half of it without stopping. She takes a deep breath, once, raises her head, rakes back her hair, and strides into the living room. She presses Play. The concerto starts again from the beginning.


End file.
